Ok I loaded Air file manager imported the text file and then I get an error in German so I have no idea what it is telling me. I appreciate what everyone is doing it's a little frustrating that Carenado can't make these changes and send out a new FDE to make life easier on people like me who are every new to this.

I just tested it and it works for me. Can you post here what the error message says, as it happens I am German. ;)

Ok I loaded Air file manager imported the text file and then I get an error in German so I have no idea what it is telling me. I appreciate what everyone is doing it's a little frustrating that Carenado can't make these changes and send out a new FDE to make life easier on people like me who are every new to this.Thank you

In all fairness to Carenado (and speaking as a developer), it's not as simple for them as banging together a new air file and distributing it. Any changes need to be evaluated, rolled into a test file, put through beta, wrapped into an installer, and published to the web before they make it public. Combine that with the fact that it's the weekend, and I think it's reasonable to expect that it'll take at least a few days more before there's any sort of official release. And that's a best-case scenario. I think it's a bit early to be frustrated with Carenado for not patching.

In all fairness to Carenado (and speaking as a developer), it's not as simple for them as banging together a new air file and distributing it. Any changes need to be evaluated, rolled into a test file, put through beta, wrapped into an installer, and published to the web before they make it public. Combine that with the fact that it's the weekend, and I think it's reasonable to expect that it'll take at least a few days more before there's any sort of official release. And that's a best-case scenario. I think it's a bit early to be frustrated with Carenado for not patching.

... and the latest mod was posted in this thread about 45 minutes ago, so this is still work in progress.

Just tried the mods and here are my results:Alt 9500 ftAlt 29.92OAT -4^oCTQ 1700RPM 1700ITT 662^oC146 KIAS (163 KTAS)Fuel Flow 357 PPH

In all fairness to Carenado (and speaking as a developer), it's not as simple for them as banging together a new air file and distributing it. Any changes need to be evaluated, rolled into a test file, put through beta, wrapped into an installer, and published to the web before they make it public. Combine that with the fact that it's the weekend, and I think it's reasonable to expect that it'll take at least a few days more before there's any sort of official release. And that's a best-case scenario. I think it's a bit early to be frustrated with Carenado for not patching.

Bill,I don't expect Carenado to reply instantly or provide a patch within minutes or a even a few days. What I expect from this "support" forum is some sort of interaction between Carenado and their customers and not only "user to user" support. Even if we only got a "thank you for your suggestion, we will try to add it to our next SP due...", I would be over the moon. Unfortunately, I haven't seen that yet.And in case you think I try to bash them, I bought their Seneca, Mooney, Bonanza, Arrow, C185 and Grand Caravan and will certainly buy their next ones as well because they make beautiful planes and they get better and better. I'm just so frustrated by the way they seem to ignore their customers here, including the ones who provide solutions.End of rant

I don't expect Carenado to reply instantly or provide a patch within minutes or a even a few days. What I expect from this "support" forum is some sort of interaction between Carenado and their customers and not only "user to user" support. Even if we only got a "thank you for your suggestion, we will try to add it to our next SP due...", I would be over the moon. Unfortunately, I haven't seen that yet.

Yeah, sometimes I get the feeling that Carenado isn't a company with real people but just a computer with artificial intelligence, humming along in a basement and designing aircraft on its own. And only in rare cases, when that computer's parser can interpret certain phrases it actually replies. In most cases, though, the little display on the computer just blinks "Syntax Error" and then it gets back to work. There is a higher chance of meeting Mrs. Columbo than getting a reply out of Carenado on these forums. :(

Ok, last tweak (I hope..) to get the flaps more ballooning. I usually work with the lift to achieve the result, but with this one I couldn't do it, so I played with the pitch effect.Go back to your airfile editor, entry 1101 Primary aerodynamics, under the "pitch" section: (DBL) Cm_df Pitch Moment - Flaps, -0.2 (originally it's -0.04)This way it's not a real ballooning effect, but it's the tendency of the airplane to put the nose high when extending the flaps (In physics, when you extend the flaps, the centre of pressure on the wings moves aft, the mean chord increases the angle, the lift increses because of chord and incresed surface, and you get this effect). This is the best result I could get. At least you really notice you are using the flaps ;)Cheers

You guys absolutely ROCK! I am still graphics card disabled, and I have no reason to go out and buy this aircraft yet. But I will, and y'all are the reason! I can't thank all of you enough for the care, passion, and dedication to this project. I only wish I could help, or even participate. I cannot even run FS9 till the GPU arrives. I've been following this thread every day, morning and evening.

I have a question about the throttle and nose down behavior. I've noticed a strong decrease of airspeed as soon as I pull the throttle lower than ~18%. That's also when the sudden nose drop occurs and trimming becomes a problem. It feels like speedbrakes are being deployed at that point or as if the prop pitch is being reversed a bit, even though I'm not even close to the reverse range on the throttle quadrant. Is that supposed be like that?

Hi,You should never pull power below 800 or so, unless you need to lose speed. Usually, over the numbers, you slow reduce to idle. It's a built in "effect" to simulate how drastically the real plane loses airspeed when at idle, as you effectively have a 106 inch speed brake in front!

Ok so, you confirmed my doubts about the flaps, I'll be checking them later. Is the amount of drag correct? Because that seems fine to me, but no pitching/change of lift, apart the first notch when lowered at high speed (above 150 kts).Then, can you confirm you can run this engine with prop at 100% the whole flight? Even if noise and vibrations can be noisy.Then again, what's bugging me more are the engine settings. Provided the above, you climb with full power, which means 1865 tq, right? Up to what altitude it usually can keep it? On average, of course it depends on hot/cold air. To set the ITT limit in FSX, I took the TO power chart, which allows me a 1865 tq at sea level with 805° ITT and 42° OAT (5 mins, etc, but you get the point) and then 50° OAT with 1700 tq, they were fine. One thing I couldn't model, as you read, was the increase of torque with RPM reduction, so I took the 1900 RPM values for higher altitudes (above 12000 feet). I guess we can go away with it here, can't we?Guess that's all for now.Thanks a lotFede

Hey Fede,As the flaps were in the release version, I believe it's close to real life. Flaps create a big ballooning effect when extended, especially at higher speeds. Flaps 10 doesn't increase drag too much, but flaps 20 and 30 do.And yes, I can confirm that, most, operators run 100% or 1900RPM. Our company actually wants it like that, but I like to be nice to the engine, especially being SEL over the water!As for the 1865 tq, it really depends on the engine. We have 4 planes ranging in 7000 hrs, down to 3000 hrs. Some will temp out faster, some slower. On a newer engine, roughly you will see max tq stop at about 7000feet, and then from there it will decrease with the increase of altitude. You may be able to get up to 8000 if you bring ITT to 740C, but we limit our engines to 710.Sounds like a plan with what you are saying about the increase of torque. Can you PM me your newest .air and .cfg file so I can try them?Thanks

Ok, last tweak (I hope..) to get the flaps more ballooning. I usually work with the lift to achieve the result, but with this one I couldn't do it, so I played with the pitch effect.Go back to your airfile editor, entry 1101 Primary aerodynamics, under the "pitch" section: (DBL) Cm_df Pitch Moment - Flaps, -0.2 (originally it's -0.04)This way it's not a real ballooning effect, but it's the tendency of the airplane to put the nose high when extending the flaps (In physics, when you extend the flaps, the centre of pressure on the wings moves aft, the mean chord increases the angle, the lift increses because of chord and incresed surface, and you get this effect). This is the best result I could get. At least you really notice you are using the flaps ;)Cheers

Hi Fede,Again, thanks for doing all of this! I have yet to try this, but I'm skeptical, as the real airplane does not nose up, but literally wants to float up. There is a little bit of nose up, but more so a big increase in lift that makes you feel like you're on an elevator unless you add down trim!

Sir, it is good of you to drop by and answer some of our questions. It is appreciated, as it is not the job of a beta tester to do such things. I speak from experience on this.I'm sorry you felt insulted by any of this. Such was not intended, but in the absence of any feedback from the manufacturer on some pretty glaring issues, we were left wondering how some of these things got past the beta stage. The feeling was, either it wasn't beta tested by real pilots, or real pilots did test it and the manufacturer didn't heed their advice. I think you can understand our frustration at that, given most of us have copies of the real Grand Caravan manual and were comparing what we had there to what we were seeing in FSX. I do understand your point about FSX having limitations. This is absolutely true. But, having airspeeds 25+ kts (more on that in a minute) below the book value, and even ITT values that are out to lunch (and even more so than we thought, based on your observations further on) aren't among those limitations. That has been proven by amateurs who have tweaked the air file and the cfg file in relatively short order. I sometimes think the "FSX Limitation" theory is a little over-used and becomes an excuse.Many of us here that have noted the differences and issues with the Caravan are/were real world (and in many cases, including mine) professional pilots. We have a wide variety of experiences on a wide variety of aircraft. I come from a background of bush flying, where I spent most of my days on floats, amphibs and skis, flying 185's, Beavers, Otters and Aztecs. Fede (who did the major tweaks here) is a RW Airline Transport Rated pilot again with a great deal of experience. Others have similar qualifications. So, I think it's safe to say that we do know and understand the difference between such things as KIAS and KTAS. I noted throughout that our units were consistent and well calculated. My tests done at 1700 ft-lbs and 1900 rpm at 4000 yielded KTAS speeds of about 130 to 135 (not KIAS, but TAS - far below the book specs), but that usually resulted in ITT temps above 740 (typically 760). From your own observations below, ITT's like that are well above what you normally see, even on takeoff. So the issues are real, and make flying the aircraft in a realistic manner (the goal of any FS payware aircraft) impossible. Thanks to Fede and a few others, that's no longer the case. What would be nice now is to hear from a RW Caravan captain, such as yourself, what the actual numbers we should expect are (and we who fly for a living are fully aware that book values are nice, but not very often accurate under a real world situation). That way we can complete some minor tweaks to really get this plane as close to reality as is possible. Yes, FSX will limit how much we can accomplish, but that limitation is nowhere near as "limiting" as some would have us believe.I, and I'm certain others, really do appreciate your input and your presence. Believe me, nobody holds a beta tester responsible for FDE's that are not up to snuff (unless that beta tester didn't report such issues, which is unlikely). Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing more from you over the coming period.

Thanks for the kind words. I understand the frustration, but this is one of the cases where I've been on the other side :(. I also never meant to insinuate that any of you are not qualified to make statements etc, as it's every apparent by your posts that you have knowledge you would not have unless you were RW pilots. I'm new to FSX kind of, but I'm not quite sure where you are seeing the KTAS speeds? I only see KIAS with the SHIFT Z command and the ASI. I agree, you should be seeing much higher than 130 KTAS. I typically on my route do not fly above 7000 ever (I only get to fly between 0-7500 feet, unless I get lucky and get to fly to different islands). I have flown the airplane at every altitude below 14,000 however. We do engine trends once a day. To be honest, it's pretty close between 5 and 7000, but when I do them I see " 1600 ft lbs, 1600 RPM, between 670-690ITT, and 93-94.5 Ng with fuel flow of 340-360pph / 320-340 pph altitude respective. One thing, if Fede could look at, would be the "carb heat" setting which is tied to the inertial separator. It shows a drop of 400 ft lbs, but should be more like 50.If you want me to check certain things, that would be safe with passengers, I'm game for it. You and Fede can PM me with any questions you might have, or requests and I will do my best to accomodate.Lastly, one reason I put myself out here, is because when I put my name on something per se, I want it to be done to the best of my abilities, and to make it the best I can. I take things personal when I am involved, and I really care about things being right when I put my name on them. It's about having respect for what you do I guess, believing in offering the best you can.Kreg

Kreg,I can't speak for Glenn, but I've been using my E6B to calculate KTAS. It is possible to set the realism in FSX so that the airspeed indicator reads in knots true. :-)I hope you keep posting here...you're sharing a lot of terrific information that's very useful to those of us who want to get the most out of our flight sim experience. Thank you!

Hi Kreg, thanks again for replying me back. Here a few answers.TAS: I usually manually set a ISA condition with no winds at any altitude, then look at GPS gnd speed. Using the rule of thumb IAS + 2% each 1000 feet alt seems not to be working very well in FS atmosphere.FLAPS : I know what you mean, that's what I tried to achieve increasing the lift factor, I could get a huge ballooning, especially at higher speed, and also a loss of lift in the takeoff phase when retracting them. Two problems arise here: the first, the plane will takeoff alone as soon as you reach 80 knots, the wings would literally lift you up nose down. The second one, the stall speed would be much decreased, below 50 knots (which is 61 in a full flaps stall on the POH). With what I did, you get this: on TO, you retract them, the nose would try to go down, so you actually lose Vspeed and have to keep it high and adjust trim. During flight, opposite situation: you lower them, the nose try to get high, you push down and trim. That's the best result I could get. To change the flaps lift factor, the model should be changed, and I don't feel like doing it. You say it was ok at release version, but I never had to trim upon extension or, even less, on TO with the retraction, if not very very little. I get a bit of ballooning at high speed, but not so much after all. They create a nice drag, though, left unchanged.ENGINE: those are the values I get, thank you. At roughly 7000/8000 feet I have full throttle in, but I can't reach 1865 tq any longer, so climb as it comes :) For the engine anti-ice, I don't think I could do anything, it's an inbuilt FS system, AFAIK, on or off. I can't tell it how much to decrease or increase.Now, if you PM me your mail address, I'll send you both air and cfg modified. No problem ;)Thanks again,FedeP.S. Just saw the pm with the pics, downloading them now. Thanks

Edited August 29, 201015 yr by Fede

There is a higher chance of meeting Mrs. Columbo than getting a reply out of Carenado on these forums. :(

Meet Mrs Columbo here :( And Carenado reacted to the weather radar and the doors issues :

On this aircraft, the weather radar is interconnected with other instruments.So do not remove it, otherwise you will have problems.If you want to get rid of it, just minimize it.Carenado

We are following this issue.Could you guys confirm if you have SP2 installed?Which windows are you using?Carenado

So I guess Carenado is listening after all and that the user input given in this thread (amazingly well done, BTW) will make it into the next SP :(